In this podcast Professor Thurman explains three steps to re-create the world of suffering as the world of bliss.
The first step is seeing true selflessness or emptiness — the negational freedom from all fixation to non-relative structures or non-relative core that we assume things and ourselves have. By following this insight deeply through the practice of critical analysis, one can reach an experience, in which everything, including oneself, disappears into a vast, luminous, deeply-releasing state.
The second step is seeing that the reality of that “disappearing state” does not destroy the “appearing state.” Instead, the appearing state reappears like a reflection in a mirror. One realizes non-duality of the absolute and relative: the absolute emptiness is the relativity; nirvana is this relative conventional “samsaric” world. The world is samsaric (meaning “bearing suffering”) only for those who do not know that it is also the absolute, for those who think that each and every little thing in the world is an absolute, conflicting against the other absolutes.
The third step is the realization of non-duality of relative and relative (thing and thing), resulting in “magnificent activities path” or "creativity path." Based on the knowledge of the absolute being relative, relative and relative are mutually non-obstructive and into-transformable. Therefore magic and miracles are possible.


Re-creating the World of Suffering as the World of Bliss – Ep. 74 of the Bob Thurman Podcast Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.


This episode was recorded on March 10, 2016 at the “Embracing the Sacred Feminine” Retreat at Menla Mountain Retreat, taught by Isa Gucciardi and Robert Thurman.